If you were the owner/manager of the Greenbelt MakerSpace, how would things be different? Now, let’s make that happen! We are starting the transition from a private non-profit to a member owned cooperative… Please come by our Open House tonight, or watch for a schedule of meetups and/or follow online presentations for more information. We invite you to join in as an active participant but at a minimum we welcome your comments and feedback.
Over the course of our first four years of operating the Greenbelt MakerSpace, we most often responded to the question of “what do ‘we’ offer?” with a question back of “what would you like to see happen here?”. While we received some good feedback, the problem we saw is that from day one most people saw the MakerSpace as something that “we” (George & Eva) owned and managed. In reality, the MakerSpace is an activity owned by Greenstems Inc., a Maryland non-stock non-profit corporation founded by us (George & Eva) and managed by small group of volunteers. One of our driving principles has always been that the MakerSpace is a community resource. While we, with help from some generous donors, funded the startup and the initial expansion of our services, we do not feel that we “own” the MakerSpace. But we do feel, now is the time to make that real. There is strength in community ownership that we can never expect to achieve (as a private corporation). Let’s talk about what that means.
